BIL wrote:
You actually turned me onto this one a while back - if I remember right it, it's entirely YM2612-powered? Absolutely incredible work. I've left
this track playing on repeat for hours while writing, got that kinda end-to-end quality.

Yep, afaik it doesn't use any of the additional sound capabilities. Someone should do a romhack and add that OST to Bare Knuckle III!

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Virtua Racing DX would justify the 32X all on its own, I think. Alchemic translation of analogue gas & brakes to digital pad. The one thing I used to find a little bittersweet is thinking of what AM2 could've done on Saturn, had that one not gone to TWI - but given the beautiful Switch version, it's easy to forget now.
That's one where the JP cart has a real advantage over the NTSCU one, too - no onboard memory in the latter, and the Desert track's final section is significantly less challenging. I've still got my old US copy, generic photo cover and all. plus 32X DOOM, my original "32X Justifier" BITD, less so now

I'm sometimes weirdly tempted to add the JP ver to my little 32X cache of VRDX, Stellar Assault and Space Harrier, but those crash bugs leave me cold... the PS1 port also has a few, but they're strictly triggered by deliberately alerting masses of enemies on certain maps without killing any. 32X just locks up at random, AFAIK (with a DOS prompt-styled error message!).
Interesting, I didn't know about the regional differences in VRDX. I hate the Doom port for 32X. I think the disproportionately poor quality of most of the console ports did more to promote PC gaming back then, than any real strengths of PC games.

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Been curious about Tempo (by RED, if I recall - one of those devs that commands my attention whatever the setting), but I'm always a bit lethargic with cuter sidescrolling. Sometimes to ridiculous extents, as with ignoring Gimmick! for years...
It's visually quite impressive, but a bit too bare-bones and lacking in terms of playability. There's nothing gravely wrong with any of the game's aspects, but they don't really come together to form something coherent and engaging, if you know what I mean. For example, the animation is great, but a lot of 2D games with lots of animation frames actually feel a little less precise, particularly if certain frames aren't cancelable. Thankfully, the controls are still good enough, but I find the visual stylings in Tempo to be disorienting sometimes. There's always some crazy effects going on in the background, but they're fixed in the screen, so you often lack a sense of spatiality, particularly when making jumps on higher up platforms. Add to that the 3/4-view on the platforms but without any drop-shadows, and it unnecessarily complicates what is really just a simple hop'n bop game under the surface. Also: the boss battles suck.
Word has it that RED rectified all these issues in the Saturn sequel, but I've never actually played it.